Tucked deep in the farthest corner of the backstage storage, behind crates marked for decommission, The Rat stood where the shadows stayed thick no matter how long the lights were on. His form blended into the dark at first glance; too lean, too still, too wrong to be just another figure waiting to be repaired.

His ears, long and slightly bent, twitched once with a mechanical whine, then stopped. The sharp points of his teeth jutted forward even at rest, rows jagged like broken glass.

One hand curled around the edge of a rusted shelving unit, not in grip, but in tension. As if holding himself back. His other arm dangled limply by his side, wire-tangled and twitching with faint, glitching pulses that lit his joints for barely a second at a time.

The Rat’s posture was always near-motion; like something that had just moved, or was about to. There was no rest in his limbs, no ease in the way his frame hunched forward, chin lowered like he was listening for footsteps no one else could hear.

The glow in his deep-set eyes was steady, small, and suffocating. They didn’t blink. They didn’t need to.

The fabric around his torso was scorched in places, blackened seams splitting to reveal fragments of spring-lock mechanisms rusted with time. His presence felt like pressure in the air. An old breath that hadn’t been exhaled in years.